<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> Hello, everyone! With permission from Seth at www.healingcrow.com, I am forwarding his thoughts on the book, "Breaking The Vicious Cycle". My husband, who has Crohn's Disease, and I (I have Celiac Disease) have been following this way of eating for almost a year with the most phenomenal success. We feel we have our lives back after a long time of going downhill and feeling out of control. My Mother, brother, and several others that I know personally, have regained their health, energy and vitality since changing their eating habits in this way also. I urge you all to check out the SCDiet which is not only gluten-free, but also free of most preservatives, additives, etc. Since those of us with CD have weakened immune systems, we need to eliminate more in our diets than just gluten to regain our health. I'm also hearing that most CDers are not feeling really great by just eliminating gluten. I urge you to check out www.scdkitchen.com and the "customer reviews" on Breaking The Vicious Cycle at www.amazon.com. to learn more about what we call "our miracle diet". Hope you can benefit from the following from Seth. Kay in Austin Seth's comments: Have you thoroughly read through the book entitled "Breaking the Vicious Cycle" by Elaine Gottschall? The book recommends a diet called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet that has helped thousands upon thousands of other people with CD and/or IBD. If you read the book, you'll see that a similar theme that is found in "Listen to Your Gut" can also be found in this book. Although the diet seems to help the majority of people who try it, it doesn't work for everyone. The author recommends giving it a try and wait and see. So what has worked wonders for thousands of people, won't necessarily work for you. However, since it has helped numerous people, it is definitely worth a try in my opinion. Even though the diet seems very strict at first, the book clearly states that not all the allowed foods are for everyone. In fact, once you get stabilized on the beginning diet, then you should slowly introduce new foods (not gluten, if you have Celiac Disease, however). If any of these foods bother you, then you should stay away from that food for a while. Eventually, once/if you have recovered, you can even start reintroducing some of the "illegal" food items. The author recommends waiting one full year before doing this, but I know of some people that have made the transition sooner. Frankly, I wouldn't want to eat these other foods based on the scientific findings I have read showing them to be detrimental to human health. I subscribe to a philosophy about human nutrition that is based on anthropology, genetics, mathematics, and others that is called Paleolithic Nutrition. This philosophy of nutrition takes a fresh look at the human species and treats him/her just like any other animal. For instance, if we first encountered tigers - we might find that a tiger, based on the fossil record, similar animals, its physiology, etc - is best suited to eat the diet of a carnivore. If we could find some packs of tigers in the wild, we might be able to study their diets and see what they are fit to eat. This line of reasoning has been used with humans to come up with what is called a paleolithic diet. Basically, it allows any food that we are genetically adapted to eat in the wild. When using this ideology towards nutrition, we find some surprising facts. For one, our Paleolithic ancestors were much taller than previously thought. The fossil record shows a sudden decrease in height and bone health after our ancestors starting eating grains. The reason I bring this up is that many people think that the SCD must be unhealthy because it cuts out large categories of foods - especially grains! However, if you read about paleolithic nutrition, you'll find that grains are in fact not very healthy at all. In fact, most of the foods forbidden on the SCD were not part of our ancestors' healthy diet. If we look for humans' in the wild we can get a glimspe as to what our preferred foods should be. My favorite example is the Inuit (eskimo). They lived on a carnivores diet and thrived until recently. Their health declined as they ate more and more modern day processed foods - grains, breads, sugars, etc. Some great resources on the Inuit are the books published by Viljamur Stefansson on the subject (he has several). There are many others, but I think he has the most experience with them that I can find. There are of course a few discrepancies. For instance, a strict paleolithic diet would not allow the use of fermented foods or any dairy products. However, the SCD is based on experience not ideaology, which is wise because no model is infallible. I firmly believe that fermented diary and other products help those with IBD tremendously. However, I have met a few people that have recovered from IBD and other chronic illnesses from a strict paleolithic diet alone without fermented foods. A gastroenterologist named Walter Voegtlin, was a firm believer in paleolithic nutrition. He also felt that fermented dairy products were very similar to the foods that our ancestors ate (meat, fat, etc) and would pose no problem to the GI tract. If we look to the "wild" we find many tribes of humans that are extremely healthy and regularly consume fermented dairy products. The Caucasians are one and there are several in Africa. The SCD also allows the use of saccharine (an artificial sweetener) - another Paleolithic Diet no no (say that five times fast). Anyway, as humans we can get addicted to sweet things. The diet can be difficult enough by eliminating many foods that we are addicted to, such as grains and chocolate. Also, many people cannot tolerate honey on the SCD, especially in the beginning or even up to the first two years or so- or maybe never. The warns against large amounts of honey for good reason. So allowing an artificial sweetener that cannot feed bad bugs is a nice crutch to have when learning the ropes of the SCD. I do not know of any wild tribes that consume saccharine or any other artificial sweetener for that matter, but saccharine has been around for over 100 years and we should know its effects on the human body by now. The same cannot be said for other artificial sweeteners. With saccharine, you know what you're getting at least. The SCD also allows some legumes. This is the biggest clash between the SCD and a paleolithic diet. Personally, I do not eat legumes (even peanuts) because I believe they are not healthy. However, many people on the SCD do eat them and tolerate them well. Many subscribers to various cultures suggest that we may be able to "detoxify" legumes by soaking them, advice the SCD subscribes to as well. But wait, as Yoda would say..."There is another..."A third diet, called a low carbohydrate diet was made popular by the charismatic Dr. Atkins. By definition, this diet is low in carbohydrates - the amount depends on the diet - for Atkins it can be as little as 20 grams or less. In my opinion, this type of diet is neither healthy nor unhealthy. If you were to eat whole foods that were naturally low in carbs (meat, greens, etc) then I would say this is healthy. But if you were to survive on the Atkin's Bake mixes and other processed foods, then I would say this is unhealthy. So it really is what you make of it. An Austrian clinician, by the name of Wolfgang Lutz, has been using a low carbohydrate diet to treat many different "diseases of civilization" that include IBD. He has treated far less patients than the SCD, but he has specific numbers based on his patients. His diet alone can help bring about remission in the majority of cases with IBD. His numbers suggest that UC takes longer to heal than does CD, but that both are positively affected by diet. If you read through his other papers, you'll see that he has a paleolithic diet slant to his opinions. He is another subscriber to the paleolithic nutrition ideology. He allows small amounts of bread in his diet, but based on his other papers I imagine this is the same sort of compromise that the SCD has with saccharine. Some people refuse to go on any diet if they can't have their bread! Some people need sweet things. Addictions are funny animals. I was strongly addicted to Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia and it took a while to break the habit. Even though I no longer drink Diet Coke, I know that I am still addicted to the stuff - it is something I must fight every day. But addictions are just as much psychological as well as physiological - take chocolate for example. Woman in the US claim to be physically addicted to chocolate, but woman of different cultures that do consume chocolate are not. So anyway, if I have a point - which I'm not sure I do, it would be that regardless of whether the SCD heals your IBD or not, it is an extremely healthy diet. The diet does not exclude medications, so why not give it a try? If it works as is, then you'll join the ranks of thousands of others. If it doesn't, that is too bad and you should move on and try something else. If you get some improvement - but not total improvement, then experiment with the different foods and see if you can make it better - that is what the books describes and it seems to work for a majority of others. The author of the book has the wisdom to realize that no diet will work for everyone - but she does give us a great place to start from by eliminating most of the foods that cause the majority of the problems and giving us a working model to figure out what other foods we might eat. Whether by coincidence or rational thought, the same foods allowed on the SCD also mirror the foods of our paleolithic ancestors. I find it amazing that two schools of thought can arrive at the same conclusion using totally different perspectives and studies. Seth Main site URL: www.healingcrow.com Related Sites: www.scdiet.org and www.scdrecipe.com Community email addresses: Post message: [log in to unmask] Unsubscribe: [log in to unmask] List owner: [log in to unmask] Shortcut URL to this page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HealingCrow ____________________________________________________________________ DISCLAIMER Be aware that much of the material on the this list represents the opinions and interpretations of other patients, and sometimes medical professionals. This information should NOT be regarded as necessarily being true and scientific. With what you learn here, do your own research and discuss your options with health care professionals involved in your care. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FAIR USE NOTICE: These posts may contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owners. 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